


Obsolescence

by aigroe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death, johnrose unacknowlefged moirallegiance i Do Not Know how to tag for that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-18 06:59:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/876943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aigroe/pseuds/aigroe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Rose are left to fend for themselves after society collapses in a matter of days to an onslaught of the undead. John is desperate to find Karkat; Rose just wants to stay alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ((hello welcome to johnkat that turned into johnrose there will be eventual johnkat i, Promise,))

He sits with legs crossed, computer balanced on his lap. It’s a shitty netbook, made for convenience not power, but it runs Pesterchum and that’s all he needs.

[ectoBiologist began pestering carcinoGeneticist]  
EB: hey!  
EB: karkat.  
EB: i know you’re not online but i keep thinking maybe you’ll come on and see this.  
EB: i’m not going to stop pestering you.  
EB: for as long as i can anyway.  
EB: it’s like how they always say in movies that they wish they’d said more.  
EB: like how in knowing you can tell nic cage is torn up about how hes been kind of rude to his kid lately and he wishes he could say more but he just can’t. he’s losing him.  
EB: and then the spaceship comes and takes him away and nic cage dies tragically along with the rest of the planet.  
EB: it’s pretty intense. i nearly had to leave the room to compose myself.  
EB: that man is a powerhouse of raw talent and charisma.

He takes a deep breath, pauses like he would if this was a real conversation and Karkat was there at the other end, gives him time to reply. Outside, he hears thudding and creaking and occasional shouting.

EB: if you were here you’d probably be saying how wrong i am, but you’d be saying it in a cool way like JOHN YOUR GRASP OF FILMOGRAPHIC QUALITY IS AS LOOSE AS A…  
EB: wow i can’t think of how to end that sentence. impersonating you is pretty difficult. i don’t know how you manage to talk like that all the time.  
EB: but ok we’re holed up above the convenience store and it’s pretty neat.  
EB: you know how to get here, right? it’s near my house. you go left and up the road for a minute and then  
EB: you know what? i’ve already typed these directions five times and i’m pretty sure you know the route anyway.  
EB: rose is holding up well but she’s going all grumpy.  
EB: earlier i tried setting her needles in jello but she looked in the refrigerator and found them halfway through. i seriously thought she was going to stab me.  
EB: it’s like she’s turned into this completely humourless boring person which is not like she normally is! not very much anyway.  
EB: and i won’t be able to prank her like that again because she says we need to conserve food and it’s very serious :(  
EB: but i know it is not her fault and we are going to try to make it to her house tomorrow if the rioters quiet down!  
EB: we know jade’s somewhere in the countryside with her grandpa. they have their own generator and about fifty guns so she’s pretty safe.  
EB: dave hasn’t been online and he isn’t answering his phone.  
EB: god i wish i’d just asked your number sometime instead of asking rose if asking for your number was gay.  
EB: i also wish i owned a cellphone so having your number would be more than a ceremonial expression of interest.  
EB: i wish i could call you. i just want to hear your voice.  
EB: you’re probably besieged by zombies who can hear you yelling at the oven or something.

There’s a knock on the door and it creaks open before John answers. Rose stands silhouetted in the light of the single lightbulb they're using.

“John. I’m going to bed.”

“Okay.” He stops typing for a second. “Goodnight.”

She hesitates, doesn’t go immediately. He looks at her and shrugs. “What?”

“Your obsession with contacting Karkat is bordering on some kind of dependence disorder. Do you mind waiting while I find a notebook and a pen? This could earn me some money when the outbreak is over.”

He rolls his eyes.

EB: but yeah. if you can get here that would be great. we have plenty of food and water.  
EB: hell, bring a friend. bring that weird pothead clown you’re always hanging around with. we could do with some entertainment. let’s set up a circus and start telling tickets to the zees.

“John.”

He stops typing and stares at her. “What?”

She purses her lips and doesn’t answer, just keeps staring at him.

He taps his fingers on the keys, but can’t think of what to add. He’s out of jokes.

The door clicks shut. The sound startles him. He expected more of a fight.

EB: g2g.  
EB: talk to you tomorrow, maybe.  
EB: if the wifi still works.  
EB: and we still have electricity.  
EB: the radio says most places have lost it so uh  
EB: anyway bye!

He clicks the netbook shut and leaves it on the sofa. Rose is easily found in the bathroom, brushing her teeth. She’s left the door open and for a minute he watches her scrubbing with ruthless patience, the kind of tooth-brushing that you see in adverts for expensive toothpaste.

“Hey, Rose,” he says.

“Mrnh.” She grunts at him, mouth full of foam.

He takes that as an invitation to join her and follows her lead. They brush quietly together, then he gives in and spits before her. “Do you want to watch the Pokemon movie before we go to sleep?”

She finally spits out her toothpaste and rinses her mouth with water. “That would mean staying up late. We should plan for the worst, and that means sleeping at a reasonable hour.”

 He scrunches his face up. “I just think you seem really tense.” He thinks about it and then cautiously adds, “you don’t have to be in control of everything.”

She doesn’t reply. She pushes past him and disappears into another room, head down as if she needs to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. He sighs, closes the door and starts getting ready for bed.

It’s only when he’s dressed in an old t-shirt and ghostbusters boxers and getting a glass of water that he sees her fiddling with a battery-powered portable DVD player, biting her lip in concentration. He goes and sits next to her on the couch, and checks out the film she’s chosen.

“I couldn’t find Pokemon. Yu-Gi-Oh was the closest thing they had.”

He snorts. “The more time we spend here, the more I’m convinced that these people had terrible taste in _everything._ ”

“If that was intended as an insult to the noble institution of Yu-Gi-Oh, you can leave this room. In fact, leave this house. Walk out into the moaning hoards and proffer your arm to the nearest undead, because if you hold Yu-Gi-Oh in anything less than the highest regard the joining the great unwashed can only raise your I.Q.” She finally gets it working and starts the DVD playing on mute to let it run through the adverts. “I will concede that owning a portable DVD player is, as Dave might say, an indicator of terminal lameness.”

John stares at an ad for takeaway pizza and tries not to drool. They had done a quick raid of a pizza joint earlier that day, but neither of them had known how to operate the ovens and therehad been ominous loud noises outside so they’d grabbed a few ingredients and scarpered. “You want to try your house tomorrow? Or maybe find a pharmacy in the mall?”

“There’s no hurry. I’ll be okay.” When John looks at her sceptically, her shoulders tremble in a tired semblance of a shrug. “I want to try my house a week ago. If we can make it tomorrow, that would be stellar.”

He nods.

“I know you miss Karkat. We’ll keep trying to get in touch with him.”

“The internet will probably be down soon. I checked some news sites but they haven’t updated much. I guess it can’t be too long until the people who look after the satellite thingies get bitten and then the satellites will stop working or something. Okay, I don’t know much about the internet! But something like that.”

She puts an arm around him and they scoot closer to each other. He can hear her heartbeat.

“I miss all of them. Not just him.”

“I know. Me too.”

They fall into silence. When the ads finish, Rose turns up the volume and they watch the film with more concentration than it deserves. Outside they hear zombies shuffling around, groaning and smashing things with clumsy hands. Inside they leave the lights off and try not to make any loud noises.

\--

They don’t get to the mall for another week. By this time the internet is gone. When they find cellphones still working in shops the things search weakly for signal before giving up. Rose imagines them as sickly old people in a world they no longer understand. They meander around, leaning heavily on zimmer frames and walking sticks, before falling to their knees, and no one comes to help them up. This is not the world they know anymore but they are just about aware enough to know their own obsolesce.

She thinks she understands how they feel. She pockets them anyway. They’re good for a few hours of entertainment. She spends hours mastering Snake, cheap Tetris and Bejewelled knockoffs, chess. The tablets are the best. When they find an Apple store with a few remaining iPads they almost cry with joy. Their visit is cut short by what she thinks of as _disruptive customers,_ but it’s a glimpse into the way things used to be.

They spend a couple of days in the mall, finding all the food and supplies they can, but it’s dangerous. They don’t realise how dangerous until John is jogging towards Rose to tell her about the (mostly) untouched candy store he found and five shots ring out in quick succession. He yelps and dives into a clothes store in a flash of red. Rose knows he’s bleeding and fears the worst, but dares not follow until she’s seen his attackers.

She considers the angle of the shot and shuffles forwards cautiously, hoping the assorted clutter of café tables and fake plants will keep her out of sight. When she sees them her breath catches in her throat. They number four, all carrying weapons: nail-studded bats, guns and knives. Each of the group is crusted with blood.

She feels an awful, traitorous sob rising in her throat and fights it down. She knows later John will say that maybe they thought he was a zee, he probably does look like one right now, haha! but she also knows that he will be wrong.

The group is talking. Debating whether to follow and kill him. But they are far away, on a different floor, and clearly looking for action of a better kind than a cornered child. They split up and go in different directions, but she is sure they aren’t coming after John.

The tension in her chest lessons. It doesn’t go away.

She waits the minimum time until she is sure they will not hear her, then dashes towards the shop she saw John go into. It’s dim inside, with only a small amount of light filtering in. Still, she can see the blood on the floor.

 _Dangerous,_ she thinks distantly. _Could attract zombies. Possible that they have a heightened sense of smell. Like sharks._

She stumbles past racks of designer jackets and skinny jeans. Her heart pounds in her ears and she knows she is bordering on hysteria.

“It’s me,” she rasps. “John, John, please say you’re there, it’s me, please be okay, please-” She trips. A loose floor tile. Thuds on the ground. Barely throws her hands up in front of her in time, feels a cut open on her lip. Wonders why she even bothered to break her fall. Lies there trying to breathe through the weight in her head and the darkness before her eyes and the bile in her throat

“Rose?”

and she almost cries with joy, she does, feels the warm salty tears coursing down her face and has to touch them and check her fingers before she believes it’s not blood.

“Rose? You alright?”

She sits up. Struggles to her feet. Wipes her face gracelessly. “I’m perfectly alright. Just a cut lip. Are you injured?”

“I think they got my arm. They’re gone?”

“Yes.”

“I feel… kind of dizzy…” He makes an odd ‘hmm’ sound in the back of his throat and sways. Rose sees the blood trickling down his arm.

“Let’s get back out into the light.” She leads him out to where there are chairs, sits him down, does her best with the gash in his arm. He is lucky, they are both _hugely fucking lucky_ , she thinks savagely as she binds the wound tight. It’s a miracle they’re not dead yet. They don’t deserve to be alive.

While he sits outside and recovers she goes and finds painkillers. As she walks, she thinks about the attackers and comes up with a radically revised plan for her and John’s survival. She sees a cookery store and investigates, mindful of John weak and waiting for her but also aware that she might not get a chance in this mall again.

Blades everywhere, sharp and gleaming, but she read somewhere you should never carry a weapon if you don’t know how to use it. She’s a decent cook and handy with a chopping knife but she’s pretty sure that’s not what the book meant. In the end she sticks some knives in her pack and takes a hefty rolling pin. Her mind spins mechanically with possibilities: stud it with nails, tie a knife to the end – she’s read plenty about makeshift weapons, all grim heroics and good winning through. Somehow she doubts this will help her much, but it keeps her mind moving and that’s what she needs.

She presses onwards. Finds a tiny drugstore attached to a supermarket and picks up painkillers, plasters, water purifiers, anything that looks useful. Searches without much hope for her prescription, remembering some of the words on the bottle and the colour of it and the shape of the pills and her mother’s complete lack of comprehension-

She’s crying again, tears running down her face, and she can’t find them.

She considers using some of the precious water they’ve found to wash down a river of chemicals to drown in.

John needs her. She surfaces gasping and trying to breathe through the mucus and hiccupping. For as long as he lives he ties her here and she hates him and loves him for it.

She’s nearly back when she hears him start yelling. She barely has the energy to be surprised. Of course something else would go wrong.

She runs and rounds the corner to find him wielding a chair and facing off against four zombies. He’s stumbling and paler than she has ever seen him. Even as she runs, lungs burning, legs pounding, she sees a zombie going for his throat and him weakly shoving it away.

She screeches, half out of her mind with her fear and half calculating. She can draw some of them off, distract them, scare them, _something._ Some of them turn to stare at her with glassy eyes and she feels ready to collapse but she holds the rolling pin tight with white knuckles and hits without remorse. The crunch as she makes contact is glorious. They fall reluctantly, but they do fall, and after a frenzied time without measure she finds herself surrounded by four corpses which move no more.

“You alright? Not bitten?” John doesn’t respond immediately and, exhausted and frustrated, she grabs him and shakes him and screams in his face. “ _John!_ Were you bitten?”

“No! I’m fine, I’m fine, are you- Rose, please, you’re hurting- hhhh _hh_ -”

When she lets go he almost collapses. There is something sick moving under his skin. His cut is much more serious than she thought.

They rest there, outside an abandoned café in the middle of an abandoned mall, while Rose tries to fix up John’s wound with makeshift supplies and John tries to fix up Rose’s emotions with shitty jokes. Even though neither of them does a very good job Rose thinks that there is one thing in this entire city that will never be abandoned, and it is the boy with ruffled black hair who sits next to her and makes her laugh while she does her best to keep a steady hand on his stitches.


	2. Chapter 2

Things finally snap when they are cooking dinner together. They’re both tired and sad, and somehow they come to the unspoken agreement that tonight they use more candles than they should and cook a three-course meal. No skimping.

They chat just to hear each other’s voices bouncing against each other. They have seen only three other people since the mall, a group who quickly ran away when they heard John having a badly-timed coughing fit. They haven’t had a conversation with anyone other than each other and the T.V. for nearly three weeks. They both smell.

So they dress up in their finest clothes and cook. It’s warm in the kitchen and brighter than they have become used to. The sing each other songs and occasionally duet, though their tastes are radically different. Rose chops carrots and hums Tchaikovsky. John fries the meat and tries, once, to rap. He stumbles over the words and they choke in his throat and there is silence for some moments as the two of them think about Dave.

For starters, pea and ham soup and homemade bread. Their first foray into breadmaking goes disastrously, but it’s a promise that they’ll keep trying. John is so amused by the fact his loaf looks like a dick that he doesn’t care, and Rose is too busy drawing wry conclusions from his eagerness to see phallic imagery in food that she doesn’t notice.

Main course, chicken and mushroom pie with flaky pastry. They make the whole thing from scratch, throwing flour at each other until the kitchen looks like it has a dusting of snow.  They laugh without fear, and it’s such a relief that it feels like crying. The thing bakes in the oven as they eat their soup and clear up. They’ve resorted to using sand to clean plates because Rose read it somewhere and it saves water. Food is no issue for them right now; water is. And other things, luxuries, like lighting and books and computers. John misses his computer. He misses the _bloop_ it always made when Karkat or Dave or Jade or Vriska came online. He misses typing line after line to them and feeling like they were sat in his room with him making him snort-laugh with dumb YouTube videos.

He’s glad he has Rose with him. She’s moody and snippety and says cryptic things and gets even grumpier when he doesn’t twist his brain in knots trying to understand what particular brand of semi-veiled misanthropy she’s wearing today, but he’d take that times a hundred over the alternative. He thinks about all this and knocks plates together accidentally while she boils the vegetables.

He knows she’s sad – they’re both sad – and he’s kind of glad of that, kind of glad that he caught her two nights ago curled in so tight on herself he feared she would break, with her shoulders shaking and her throat making some noise that didn’t quite carry to her throat. When he asked her what was wrong she gulped in air and clung to him so tight it hurt and said _Kanaya, Kanaya Kanaya Kanaya_ and he is glad that he found her like that, because it was nice to feel like he was the one keeping on top of things for once.

The next morning she woke at the same ungodly hour as always and, come sunrise, ordered him to kit up for another sweep of the surrounding houses. They didn’t discuss what had happened, and John had been glad of that too, because being in control was nice but he couldn’t do it all the time.

So he thinks about that and doesn’t think much about the plates and he’s humming and tapping his feet a bit and he doesn’t look but he knows Rose is smiling because she thinks it’s cute when he acts dorky like that and he’s doing his best to get the dishes clean with their bowl of industrial sand and he’s not really thinking about it so it really shouldn’t be a surprise when, with a particularly energetic leap to the climax of some shitty kpop chorus, he bumps heavily into Rose and knocks the pie dish right out of her hands. It cracks on the floor. Meat and sauce goes everywhere.

John’s wincing from the sudden loud sound it made. Somehow the cheerful mood has dissipated.

Rose looks at the ruined pie, and then back at him in horror.

He should say something, but it’s difficult to think.

She sinks down on a chair and starts shaking, bows her head and tries to bury it in her arms in some pathetic defence tactic. John picks his way over to her, trying not to step on anything, and cautiously  puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Sorry.” His voice feels too big, too forceful. He tries to tone it down and ends up with a whisper. “It’s okay. We can clean this up.”

She flinches away and he tries to catch her and stop her, tries to say something that will calm her down because he can barely see her face and he’s not sure what’s going on (and his stomach’s rumbling because he’s hungry and all he really wants to do is eat). It’s a bad idea. She spins and smacks his hand away, furious, and then she’s yelling.

He doesn’t catch all the words, only some of them. Definitely a lot of swearing. Her hands are clenched tightly. Her face is bright red and scrunched up and it scares him and he tries to say so but she ignores him and keeps screaming in a seemingly endless torrent. He wonders if she doesn’t have to breathe or something, but apparently not.

“Rose, I’m sorry – I’m sorry, _christ,_ please – Rose – listen, Rose, please, the zees are going to hear-”

She stops for that. Stops abruptly and almost sadly. An explosion that outdoes itself, ends up a puff of fire that doesn’t catch.

She sways. John is reminded of a tree about to topple. A glacier about to melt. She looks confused, like she’s forgotten what they were doing.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He pushes her chair aside as gently as he can and starts to clean the pie up. It’s splattered out of shape and he isn’t sure how clean the floor is, but he does his best. In the end there is one steaming pile on each plate. He adds the veg and gives Rose the one least flecked with nasty floor stuff.

They sit opposite each other. She sits stiffly.

“It’s no big deal-”

“I can’t take this.” She shovels food into her mouth without any of her usual showy care. She eats as if starved. “I can’t deal with it. I’m a liability.”

“You’re not-”

“I lose my calm easily. My sleeping patterns are ridiculous, John, I’m exhausted – the other day, those zombies surprised us and I barely had the energy to react-” She pauses to gather her thoughts together. “I won’t allow myself to stay long enough to become a danger to you.”

He puts his cutlery down and stops eating to show that he is serious. Rose knows to take him seriously if he stops eating.  “I’ve been relying on you ever since this whole thing started. If we have to switch around for a while, I don’t mind. Even if you keep sometimes accidentally being a douchebag.”

Rose huffs in amusement. The sound is dry and without strength. “Your understanding of my particular personal tragedy is somewhat elementary.”

“I said it like a normal person would, so sue me. I mean it. We’ll get through this, and… and we’ll find your meds, and you’ll be back to normal grumpy Rose and not scary grumpy Rose. We’ll do it soon.”

She doesn’t look up from her plate. It’s already nearly empty. “And when I run out of those?” She cuts him off before he can offer a solution. “And after then? They stop working eventually, John. My brain gets used to their weight and learns to shake them off and then I am the same as ever. I can’t change myself and my stability of mind has always had an expiry date.”

He shakes his head stubbornly. “We’ll find a way.”

“John…”

“I _know_ we can-”

“I’m going to bed.” She dumps her plate and chipped glass on the side.

His eyebrows shoot up in surprise, but he doesn’t say anything about it. “Okay! We’ll figure something out tomorrow-”

“Sure.” She spits it out, something that would be a drawl if it wasn’t so angrily compressed, dripping with sarcasm. Mostly she just sounds tired.  She disappears down the corridor and doesn’t turn the light on, so John can only barely make her out moving between the bathroom and her bedroom. Soon she is gone completely, folded down into her bed with the covers drawn tight round her neck like a body bag. John has seen her sleep so often he feels he could draw it with his eyes closed. Sleepovers and summer camps and those scared first nights when they clung to each other.

He almost wishes they were back then. It’s not long before he feels the itch at the back of mind and this time he succumbs and scratches it like he’s been trying so hard not to. He lets himself think it.

He misses Karkat.

Misses him like the Earth must have missed the moon on those first lonely nights when that chunk of rock had first ripped itself away and begun its solitary orbit, misses him fiercely as silver light falling where the night used to be absolute, misses him like _oh_ like _no._ Knows the moon didn’t really happen like that, there isn’t much poetry to be found in physics unless you have that very mathematical brain (god knows John never did) but thinks it anyway because a pretty folly helps him understand his feelings better than the plan and unadorned truth.

Karkat is somewhere, alive, in the city. He trusts that. Doesn’t know who he trusts it to but he trusts with all his heart. Rose was right to call _elementary;_ he’s a little boy reaching for his blanket.

He stifles anger every day, anger no one would guess he had in him. He is seething with the injustice of it. That he should finally get the courage together to ask Karkat out, that Karkat could – of all possible words – have said _yes_ , that they could have had three perfect months – it seems beyond belief now.

But they had it. It’s difficult to believe that silly overly-ornery defensive hedgehog of a boy was ever his, but John trusts this too.

They will find each other. He knows this because if he did not know it he would have already given up.

He sits in the flickering darkness as the two remaining candles burn down, and he thinks about Rose and Karkat. He thinks about his other friends too, and tries not to think about Kanaya. He barely saw what happened but he remembers the noises vividly and clearly and that’s enough for him. He does his best to imagine how he’d feel if that happened to Karkat and stops short.

He makes his decision. It’s pretty obvious what his course of action should be. He’ll have to sneak out behind Rose’s back, and it occurs to him that it’s almost like a prank. That pleases him. Decision made, he quickly tidies up as best he can, blows out the candles and goes to bed. He sets his alarm for an hour before sunrise and goes to sleep grinning and resolute.


	3. Chapter 3

When he wakes, he feels like groaning and burying his head under the covers, but he slaps the alarm off and gets up. He moves quietly but not with great care; before sunrise, it’d take a minor explosion to wake Rose.

He takes a backpack and puts some crackers, apples and a bottle of water in. After some deliberation he adds some chocolate. There’s a notepad and several pens on the side, and he uses them to write a note.

_rose, i have turned into a jar of pickled onions! please do not eat me. i’m using my mind to write this. if you want to save me, you must paint your body with the pickle stuff (the liquid that makes them pickled? is it just pickle?) and sing a song to the full moon. you will find a paintbrush in the drawer below the sink._

Next to this, he places a jar of pickled onions. Then he writes a second note to put in the drawer under the sink.

_just kidding! i bet you would have done it though. fooled you again! i’ve gone to get your meds. don’t worry about me, i took some food and water and i’ll find more along the way. i should be back by sunset. if not there is not much you can do to contact me, haha! but if i’m not back in a few days i might be dead sorry. or i’ll have found where the party’s at!_

That done, he goes to the hallway and rummages in the cupboard until he finds a bicycle helmet that fits him. It’s bright pink and purple, but he doesn’t think the zees can see colour. He figures it’s worth wearing just in case. He pulls on a thick jacket too, sticks his long-dead phone in his pocket and pats it. Rose’s house key is still by the door, where it’s been resting since they moved into the shop. He pockets it. Finally, he picks up a hefty hammer from the side and weighs it in his hands. His left arm twinges a little, but it’s bearable.

They haven’t tried using the hammer yet. Normally they stick with sports equipment and a knife or two just in case. He decides to take it so he doesn’t deprive Rose of her first choice. It is reassuringly heavy, to the point that he doesn’t think she’d be able to wield it. He swings it a couple times and grins. There are at least some advantages to puberty.

He checks the time. Nearly sunrise. Time to leave before Rose wakes. He feels like a naughty kid running away from home as he slips out the door and clambers down the ladder into the shop below.

The shelves have long since been emptied. Rose and John spent a day several weeks ago hauling up everything useful to where it was more defensible. They had also smashed some glass, knocked shelves over and sprayed graffiti in the hope it might deter scavengers. _There is nothing here for you._

It looks derelict from the outside, too. Mostly they sprayed nonsense, but here and there they left signs for their friends in the vague hope that someone might come looking for them. A badly painted green slimer ghost grins cheerfully at John, and he notices it’s starting to fade. He’ll touch it up when he gets back.

He takes measured, careful steps. The road is littered with debris and he is wary of attack. Ever since he got shot in that mall Rose has told him to run if he sees people. He doesn’t think that’s a very nice attitude, and surely people would band together in times of crisis, but she quotes the Stanford Prison experiment at him and a couple of other statistics he’s tired of hearing and then the argument ends as every argument with Rose ends. She’s cleverer, so she wins.

He swings the hammer, starts humming and has to stop himself. It’s chilly but not biting. The sun is only now coming up over the houses, and he has to be extra careful not to stand in anything gross.  The street is deserted and preternaturally silent. The whole city feels like a ghost town. Except that’s the wrong word because ghosts are remnants of your soul when your body’s dead, and zombies are pretty much the opposite, so he thinks maybe he should call it a zombie town, which is less of a metaphor and more just what it is-

There’s movement in the corner of his eye. He jumps and spins, heart hammering.

A stick-thin dog eyes him up wearily, then turns and plods away. John lowers the hammer, heart still hammering.

 _Hold onto that feeling,_ he imagines a grizzled zombie veteran Nic Cage saying. _That feeling keeps you alive._ Fuck, Cage would be perfect for the role. Cage would be perfect for any role.

It’s about 45 minutes to Rose’s house normally, but last week they discovered a huge barricade blocking one of the main streets. The place was crawling with zees so they were forced to retreat. John thinks he knows a few other ways, but they’ll take longer, and side streets mean dormant zombies mean b-list horror movie jump scares waiting to happen.

He pauses briefly at the end of the road, looking at the way to his place. It’s only five or ten minutes, even taking the zees into account. They’ve been back there once before, but there was nothing useful left and it reminded him too much of his father.

No time to stop. He keeps walking. A month and a half now, he realises. Since the phone call.

He feels the shaking start and forces himself to start jogging, then running. Rose advised against wasting energy unless he had to but he does have to, because otherwise he’ll come to a complete standstill.

With the hammer and the backpack and the big coat he is hot and out of breath within minutes. He slows down, nursing his stitch, which is just as well because it means he hears them moaning before he sees them.

He stops and wants to turn back but he forces himself. Creeps up to the corner and pokes his head round.

It’s a pack of them. He counts seventeen and isn’t done when more round the corner and the group swells. He wonders vaguely why he’s counting and thinks _so I can tell the story right._

He can’t see what they’re all so fussed about, but they are clearly fussed about something. They knock each other aside as the fight to be in the centre of the mob, but though he cranes he can see nothing until a zombie comes tearing towards him holding a severed human leg.

Several of the group break off and run after the runaway zombie. It clings onto the leg, and the leg flaps slapstick semaphore and leaves a trail of blood. It’s recent. Very recent.

 John backs away, horrified and disgusted and also scared. They’re coming right at him and even if they don’t see him they’ll come round his corner in a second and then they’ll see. He’s about to turn and run but one of the zees in the swarm finally tackles the leg thief and in moments they’re all on him. It’s a football game but with human parts. A footfoot game, John thinks, but it’s not at all funny and the smell is making him want to throw up.

He should leave and find another route. Yes, that’s what he’ll do. He starts to shuffle backwards, not daring to look away from the group of zombies in case one of them finally realises he’s there. They are tearing into each other fighting for the leg. It happens almost in slow motion, and John knows he should look away but he can’t. A zombie is grabbed and pulled at from either side, and one thing John has learned about zombies that he didn’t expect is this: they are strong.

The zee struggles but it can’t escape. Others have noticed its weakness, and it is clinging to a piece of thigh so they all join in. They claw and tug until John sees it torn entirely in two. It rips down the middle like a paper doll made with clumsy, impatient hands. Skin splits and flesh parts and things fall onto the pavement. They flop and squelch and some are only half out and the smell is _overpowering._

John can’t help it. He doesn’t even anticipate it. One minute he’s watching and the next he’s doubled over, fighting to stand up, throwing up again and again onto the sidewalk like his entire stomach has decided to make like the unlucky zombie’s guts and abandon ship. It seems to last hours until he pulls himself together enough to see that the remaining zees turn towards him. He thinks he sees their noses prick, and maybe there’s a glint of recognition in their eyes. As one they shamble and then start running, away from the old corpse, straight at him.

He holds in another bellyful of half-digested food, spins and runs as fast as he can. He barely knows where he’s going but there’s no time to think, just _thud thud thud_ one foot in front of the other as behind him the hoarde does the same.

He’s dizzy but his body is coursing with energy. He weighs nothing, he could run forever -but there’s a burning in his chest and he thinks he’s going to fall over. He’s crying, too, he realises. Sobbing with fear. He can barely see and suddenly everything is heavy and his asthma, his _fucking asthma,_ he stumbles and trips and his knees and hands sting-

This won’t be it. He feels he could scream but puts all his energy into grabbing the hammer. Scrambles round and stands and swings and swings and swings. The hammer has a much longer range than any of their baseball bats and it has a momentum all of its own. He clubs a head in and there’s another to replace it, a face that used to mean something to someone. He smashes them anyway.

A hand grabs his wrist. He has a moment of horror as he tries to pull it off and realises these fuckers are stronger than a weightlifter on steroids, but his hammer hand is free. He swings so hard the zee’s torso disconnects from the arm.

Another coming from behind but he does a 360, knocks its head off its neck and sends it flying. His arm is hurting, this is far too much movement for the gun wound and it feels like it’s ripped open again, but it’s the least of his worries. He slams one in the face, knocks its legs from under it and stamps as hard as he can on it, foot coming down brutally on cartilage and bone.

One of the slower ones approaches him and something in its shuffle and vacant stare reminds him of trips to the old people’s home, but that doesn’t stop him. He lifts the hammer high and lets gravity send it crashing down. The zee’s skull cracks like an egg. Viscous grey fluid dribbles out, and another knock sends the thing falling to the ground.

The disembodied hand is still clinging to him. He rips it off and throws it across the street, then scrambles in his pack. He can barely see and the world seems to be blackening around the edges, why the _fuck_ didn’t he put it in his pocket? But it’s there and he pulls it out and is thankful for shopkeepers with asthmatic kids. He thinks the stuff might go stale at some point, but right now it still works.

His lungs calm down and the tightness in his chest subsides.

He folds slowly to his knees and finally empties his stomach of its last contents. He hates himself for wasting food and knows that’s the least of his worries. He’s put some distance between him and the main hoarde, but a single zee could pick him off now like flicking lint off a jacket.

He’s fought off a mere six zombies. He was lucky there weren’t more. He was lucky they weren’t stronger. He is lucky to be alive.

After aeons have passed, he drags himself to the side of the road and leans against a house. He finds his canteen, takes a sip of water and spits. Then he takes a long drink. His breathing is almost back to normal. He doesn’t think his heart will ever be.

He stows his inhaler carefully in his bag and sticks the water in on top, then zips it up. It takes an immense effort to stand but he manages it and shrugs the bag on his shoulders. He’s sticky with sweat and smells bad – he thinks some of the vomit might have landed on his clothes. Still, he makes himself get moving.

The main road is clearly blocked by the horde. There’s no point trying that route, not unless he wants an untimely date with death. He stretches his brain but can’t think of any alternatives routes.

Unless he can somehow go parallel to the road. He looks up at the house he’s been leaning against. The door is closed, but a few swings of the hammer get it to crash open.

The interior is covered in a thin layer of dust. It’s clearly not occupied. In the kitchen he finds mould and rot and, joy of joys, a sixpack of cola. He almost cries with happiness. He downs one immediately, keeps one out to drink while he walks and puts the four others in his pack. There’s nothing else of use, so he makes a beeline for the garden.

It’s tiny and typically suburban: a patch of grass and a patch of concrete. A single children’s swingset. But from there (John has to think a moment about direction) he can easily get into the next garden, and from there the next. Sometimes he can climb the fences and sometimes he has to kick them down, and the noise worries him, but he doesn’t see any signs of pursuit.

It takes a lot longer this way, but after a while he hears the moans in the distance again. There must easily be at least fifty of them, but he thinks they’re beginning to move.

He takes a break from garden-hopping to peek cautiously through a window and sees them tramping along. They’re going in the opposite direction to him, but he’s wary of stragglers. He keeps going through back gardens, but with less urgency. The houses intrigue him, and he is struck with the possibility of food, but he doesn’t want to risk finding an occupied house.

In the end the gardens end with a brick wall and he is forced to strike off in a completely unknown direction or return to the road. Before he does that, he checks his watch. Several hours have passed already, and he’s maybe halfway there.

He sits down on the grass, which is far too long, and takes out his lunch. His stomach grumbles and he eats quickly, realising how ravenous he is. The crackers, apple and chocolate bar are gone in seconds. He considers the coke but thinks of Rose and leaves it. He’s on a mission.

Lunch over, he stands and brushes the grass off his bum, then readies himself. The back door caves within a couple of blows, but he is immediately aware that something is very wrong.

It’s the smell. Like rotten meat.

He thinks about going back to the house before, but he doesn’t hear any zombies and he’s worried about the noise. Still, he proceeds cautiously, hammer waving in front of him like a protective ward. The smell doesn’t diminish as he walks inside; it gets worse. He wants to vomit. He leaves the door open, hoping it’ll let in some fresh air, and edges forwards.

It’s dark inside. Someone closed the curtains and never returned to open them. He forces himself to check the kitchen cupboards, but moves quickly. There’s nothing edible there. Spices and other miscellaneous flavourings, nothing they can live off. There’s a tube of tomato puree, too, nearly empty, and it strikes him that he can’t remember the last time he tasted tomatoes. He takes the tube, uncaps it and squirts the last dregs stuff straight into his mouth. It’s not nearly powerful enough to drive away the stench.

He tosses the empty tube aside and moves onwards. There’s a sizeable dining room, but the table is coated in a thin layer of dust and he quickly shuffles through it. He’s trying not to touch anything. He feels like a house guest left alone in a room, looking through family mementoes. Sometime soon the owner will return and he will feel an inarticulate embarrassment at being caught, though he’s doing nothing wrong.

The zombie apocalypse is a great opportunity for pranking, he thinks, and wonders why he hasn’t considered this before. Someday he should hide behind a door and leap out at Rose. He’d scare the living daylights out of her. The thought brings a smile to his face, but it soon slips straight off again.

He sees blood.

There’s a congealed trail of it, and he doesn’t want to follow it to the grisly X marking the spot, but he has to. It’s the only way out to the street.

He walks on the balls of his feet, hammer readied though he knows there won’t be anything to hit. He has to play hopscotch to avoid standing in it, but he manages, and then he’s there and the body’s in front of him. He almost overbalances but stops himself just before falling.

The body has only just started decomposing. No one has closed the woman’s eyes; they stare glassily at the ceiling. John thinks they look like the eyes on the fish in the old biology labs. They could be submerged underwater, behind glass.

There are laughter lines around her mouth and her earrings are tiny hearts. She’s wearing nice clothes, as far as John can tell, but they’re too big for her. He’s reminded of the way his own tightest t-shirts now hang off him. He’s had to cut new notches in his belt. But it’s not the same, because she’s much thinner than him. _Emaciated_ is the word Rose would use.

The gun is still in her hands. She shot well. What sticks in John’s head is how her body lies on the floor. This isn’t a corpse that fell. She lay down, carefully, composed, before shooting herself. Her face shows no emotion.

He leans down with great caution, as if he fears she might leap up and attack him. Her fingers are strong but he manages to pry them off. He doesn’t know much about guns, but he thinks there should be a safety catch. After a few moments he finds a flicky thing that isn’t the trigger and pushes it, holding the gun as far away from him as he can. It simply clicks.

The gun goes in his pack.

He clears his throat. He hasn’t spoken since last night, and the air feels dead. He speaks so quietly his voice breaks into a whisper and he has to force himself to put some effort into it. Still, it feels like the right thing to do.

“I’m sorry that you thought… that the best way out was this. I hope you’re happier now.” It’s not enough, but all he wants to do is go. “Rest in peace.”

Another moment of deliberation, then he stoops and uses his fingertips to close her eyes. He feels intensely the fragility of the skin there. She has crow’s eyes by her eyes and frown lines, but he’s sure she was happy in life.

He feels like he’s fulfilled his duty, so he hops over the corpse and rifles through the keys hanging on a hook until he finds the right one. The door swings open easily. The air outside is sweeter than anything he’s ever tasted.

The street is deserted. Best of all, he’s surpassed the huge barrier that was blocking the way to Rose’s. It’s only a couple more streets.

There’s almost a jaunty spring in his step as he picks his way through various piles of rubbish. On the corner he almost gets surprised by a zee, but the guttural groan warns him and he swings accurately. It falls, and he adds another blow for certainty.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah, you’re going to have to try harder than that!”

It’s past midday by the time he reaches Rose’s street. His feet sound loud on the sidewalk and his grip on the hammer is starting to loosen. Puberty is all well and good, but he’s been carrying the thing for hours now. He decides to rest when he gets inside and starts imagining the layout of the house, figuring out where he needs to be wary.

Rose’s mom had holed up with them, just for a day or two at the start. She’d found them the abandoned shop and shown them how to build barricades and advised them to burn the stairs if it got any worse. Then after a while she pulled Rose aside, apparently gave her a couple more tips and a hug goodbye, then disappeared into the city.

John’s pretty sure that’s not the whole story, but he didn’t prod her more about it because Rose gets scary when she talks about her mom. Not angry scary but sad scary, which is worse.

Still, what it means is that the house should be empty, just like the entire neighbourhood. There aren’t even many corpses. They’ve seen hospitals, from a distance, but whenever they did they turned in the opposite direction and walked and kept walking. Even from far away they could see bodies piled up outside. Human jenga.

Most people died. Some died and then came back.

And a few survived, through immunity or luck. John doesn’t know which he has – whether he caught the disease but his body fought it off, or whether he’s somehow not been subjected to it yet.

He hopes to god it’s the first one. Hopes it every time a cut itches or he starts coughing for no reason. Rose says it probably is, considering, and he says why, considering what, and she says immunity is inherited, and, well. Your dad. Is… _was_.

And he has second thoughts about whether being immune is such a good thing.

He’s so deeply wrapped in thought that he doesn’t hear the engine until it’s a few streets away. he frowns and listens hard, but it’s definitely an engine. An actual working engine. And it’s moving, too. Towards him.

His first feeling is relief. A car means drivers means adults means safety. No matter what Rose says, he doesn’t believe people would really set out to hurt other people. Not when so many were already dead. But his arm twinges with pain, gun wound still not healed, and even though he’s sure that was all a misunderstanding he starts walking faster.

It’s more like running, actually. The sound is getting closer and he wants to be inside when they pass by. Just because he has nothing to trade, and he knows he looks pretty haggard, and he doesn’t want another misunderstanding. The first one hurt enough.

The key is buried deep in a pocket and he feels he could kill his past self. He pulls out the other crap – old subway tickets and gum wrappers – and throws it aside. Finally he feels metal and grabs it, takes the key out and has to try four times to fit it in the lock because he’s panicking and the engine is getting closer.  His chest is constricting and he hopes he doesn’t have to run. It’s starting to hurt.

Turns the key – _wrong way, dumbass_ – tries again and it’s open, fuck, he almost falls over as he stumbles in. Slams the door behind him and locks it, then dives quick as he can into the living room and sits right below the window. No-one’s going to see him from this angle.

After a few moments of heart slowing down and breath returning to normal, he turns round and peeks over the bottom of the window.

A brightly coloured minibus is moving down the street. It looks like it’s been sprayed with random colours, like someone decided to try graffiti and realised halfway through they had no artistic talent. There’s a couple of people glowering out of windows. They have guns. Big ones. Guns that mean business, that will arrive five minutes early in a sharp three-piece suit with a briefcase and the memos from the last meeting neatly typed up. Guns that kill people.

John stares, and stares, and stares.

On the side of the van, in big black letters, someone has scrawled _E.C.C._ and added some absurd flourish that John can’t decipher. He stretches up a little more, trying to figure out what it is.

 _Blam._ John drops. Glass everywhere. Pain, too. And there’s laughter filtering in from outside. Another shot whizzes overhead. John sees the wall gashed, but doesn’t think he’s hit. His ears ring. But they don’t stop, they’re moving on.

He stays there still long after they’ve gone, after he can’t hear the engine any more. Feels the glass in his skin and the blood in his mouth but stays there. Curled up damn near foetal with his face pressed to the carpet until he stops shaking.

Sits up and it starts all over again, but his back’s against the wall. Fingers are trembling too much to pick the glass out but he gets the worst and spends more time sitting there trying to breathe. He wants to use his inhaler but isn’t sure there’s much left and doesn’t want to waste it.

 _Breathe._ And he does, curled up tightly with his breaths loud enough for it to sound like screaming in his ears, but he does. He stops occasionally and just stares into space, then exhales another great, shuddering sigh, and the whole thing starts again.

Eventually it calms down enough for him to do actions. He recites a to-do list in his head and methodically checks it off with shaking hands.

  1. Move away from the glass.
  2. Walk – okay, stagger to the kitchen, out of sight of the street.
  3. Pick as much glass as possible out.
  4. Wonder about infections and other gross stuff that you don’t know enough about to worry over.
  5. Check for food. Find a pack of poptarts and almost cry with joy.
  6. Eat the first (raw) so quickly you barely taste it.
  7. Eat the second, third and fourth more slowly, tearing away tiny chunks and popping them in your mouth, then chewing pensively. Struggle to swallow – dry mouth. Stare at the floor.



When he’s done with that he stuffs the rest in his pack. Then he takes out his gun.

He points it away from himself, turns the safety off and tenses a finger on the trigger. He no longer doubts Rose’s convictions. Other people are the enemy just as much as any zee. John doesn’t know the first thing about guns, but he knows in that moment that if anyone tries to attack him again he will fire until he hits something. He’s too scared not to.

Something creaks upstairs.

He freezes. Something clicks in him, and he notices the chill on his back. Turns slowly and sees the hole in the back door. Someone’s already here. Someone who knows how to break in with the minimum of fuss.

Not here. Oh, god, not here. He’s got the point. The world is scary and dangerous and full of people/things that want to kill you and you can never, never relax.

There’s thudding, soft but definite. Someone is trying to move down the stairs quietly, but John knows those creaks, and whoever it is sounds clumsy.

He holds tight onto the gun.

He doesn’t want to kill someone. Definitely doesn’t. Even if they’re trying to murder him, it’s different to a zee. There’ll be proper blood, and proper guts, and John doesn’t think he could cope with that. He starts to worry about the noise a gunshot will make.

Soft steps now, bordering on shuffling, but he’s sure a zee couldn’t have got in. Fear crawls up his neck, winds fingers in his hair and starts wetly kissing his shoulders. He doesn’t know what to do. Backs himself into a corner and points the gun at the doorway. These few pounds of metal don’t feel like an effective shield. His heart pounds fit to burst.

They’re a few metres away. John’s breathing is thunderous in his ears and his blood roars, but he doesn’t feel like a storm. He feels like a scared boy.

“I’ll shoot,” he calls. It’s meant to be a warning but it sounds like anything but.

The footsteps stop.

Gun comes first. Bigger than his, scarier too, but tiny hands holding it. Head doesn’t follow. Whoever it is stays hidden. Though John is pretty sure they can’t see him, the gun makes his neck prickle with unease.

He takes a deep breath and calls again, his voice deeper. “I- I’m telling you, I’ll shoot!”

Silence. Then “ _John?”_ and a head, peeking round the corner, face grimy and worn, hair greasy and lank. The voice is shrill and piercing enough to make him wince, but he _knows_ it.

“T-Terezi?” he asks weakly. It’s like a slap to the brain, and suddenly he’s swimming in unfamiliar waters. She is a shadow of a girl, more so now than ever, malnutrition finishing the job her metabolism started, but her feet are wide apart and she stands as if braced against the gale. There’s blood crusted on her jeans and more spattered on her t-shirt, and from the way she stands he thinks some of it’s hers.

She’s still pointing the gun at him.

 “Terezi,” it sounds like a wheeze, sounds like a tired old man, “it’s me.”

Her lips were always thin. Now they are a scar. Her tongue flicks out momentarily then darts back inside. Her eyes are focused disconcertingly just above his right shoulder, but the gun is steady and perfectly aimed.

He takes a deep breath. His legs are jelly, and he’s glad he’s already sat down. He says her name again, like a question, like a supplication.

“Put the gun down.”

John doesn’t. Not sure why, but he holds onto it, keeps it pointed at the girl he’s known since fifth grade. “Dude, what the hell? It’s me. I’m not going to shoot you. I don’t even know how to use this thing.”

She tightens her grip on the gun, shifts her weight a little.

“Rezi- _why_ ­-”

“That gun,” she begins. Swallows and breathes starts again. She is quiet, not cautious quiet or threatening quiet but weak quiet. “That gun is a handgun. Fires one bullet at a time and isn’t very precise. It could put a hole in someone, but zombies don’t care about holes that size. People do.”

John looks at her blankly, and she rolls her eyes, exasperated. “John. That gun’s made for killing the living, not the undead.”

 _Oh._ “Shit, Terezi, no, I’d never- No! I didn’t know that, I haven’t used it, I just thought it might be useful to pick up – I only found it earlier today, I – _fuck_ , do you really think I’d-”

“I heard gunshots.”

“Yeah, from _outside_ , some wierdos in a van started shooting at me for no reason! Besides, _you’ve_ got a gun!”

“This thing could probably knock a hole in a wall big enough to walk an elephant through. It blows those corpsified fuckers to high heaven.”

“And you’re _pointing it at me?_ ”

Terezi slowly smiles. Small huffs of laughter begin to claw their way out of her chest. The cackles sound like an old engine struggling to start.

A moment later John manages a nervous half-grin. Terezi laughing is not always a good sign, but he thinks maybe it is right now. He puts his gun down and kicks it across the room, then holds his hands up in the air. “Can I move, cop?”

She sets the shotgun down carefully. “Alright, punk, but don’t try anything.” She cracks a grin. He thinks he’s safe.

He stands up, trying not to make any sudden movements just in case, and stares at her across the room. The last time he saw her was months ago, on a night with fireworks and toffee apples and Karkat’s hand in his. She was always hard and hollow, like you could knock on her and hear emptiness on the other side, but now there is something tightly coiled in her, or maybe something that used to be tightly coiled has unwound. He’s not sure, but she’s pale, and her voice is thinner than usual.

“You alone?”

“Hm? Uh, yeah. Rose is near my house, but I came here to get her meds.”

“Psych 101 sent you to get her pills for her?  She finally learned to delegate to the big guns?”

“No, uh, she doesn’t know I’m here.” John wonders what Rose is up to right now. She must have found the note hours ago. She’s probably worrying, and that means she’ll be furiously writing down everything she can think of about the zees as if some team of trained adults is going to appear and need her expert opinion.

Sometimes John thinks Rose can be pretty stupid.

“How about you? Are you…”

“With Karkat?” Terezi cackles, and John wants to curl up like a hedgehog until that laugh goes away. “What’s it to you?”

He rolls his eyes. This is why he never hung out with her much. “You know what it is. Are you?”

“Nach!” She watches carefully as he closes and opens his eyes, blinks carefully once and twice, processing the information, _of course she’s not, this isn’t any worse than it was five minutes ago so why is there suddenly a lump of pain in your chest,_ and only once he breathes out and his shoulders relax does she add, “we left him at home.”

“You _what?_ ” And she’s laughing again, but he doesn’t care, because he could cry or shout or – oh, god. “Terezi! Is he ok?”

“He’s fine, doofus. He’s kind of scratched up but it’s barely a six out of ten. Laaame. Dave is with me too but we split up.”

John frowns. “Why’d you split up?”

“This here war injury.” She grins, knifelike, and pulls up her jeans. Her shin is bandaged, but blood and something yellow is oozing through. He winces; it doesn’t look nice. “So I’m staying holed up here and he’s on mission blueberry-orchid, also known as finding you losers.”

“Wait, when did he leave?”

“Couple hours ago. But he would have taken the rad route, and you probably didn’t.”

That means they must have been close to each other. Within a couple of blocks, if that. And they’ll see each other soon. John’s not sure how he feels about that, and he’d rather not figure it out. His eyes are drawn again to Terezi’s wound. “Shit, Terezi, how are you standing on that?”

She laughs breathily and he notices she’s leaning against the wall. She’s still deathly pale.

“Uh. Should you be standing up?”

“I’ll cope. You got any food?”

“I really don’t think you should put much weight on that.”

“Oooh, mister blue sky, I love it when you nurse me.”

He flushes. Now that he’s paying attention he’s sure she doesn’t look comfortable. And if it was bad enough to merit splitting up, it must be seriously hurting her. “Ok, I have food. But… I won’t give it to you until you’re sat down!”

“You are the worst fucking manipulator I have ever met.” There’s a sheen of perspiration on her forehead. “I’m fine.”

“I’m just worried…” He takes a step towards her.

“I’m strong enough to outsmart a moron, if you think you’re going to-” She stops leaning on the wall and sways. It seems like her intention was to show him she doesn’t need it, but she achieves the opposite with stunning accomplishment. Her leg gives out from under her and instead of catching her he steps back. She lands with a thump on the floor.

“John, you useless piece of shit, do you not know the goddamn _protocol_ when a lady is falling, you motherfucking _catch_ her you– _ugh_ , this hurts worse than watching Meryl Streep try to act-”

“Sorry! Holy shit sorry-” He tries to grab her and lift her up by her armpits, but she grunts and hisses something about him pawing her boobs more clumsily than Makara could if he tried, so he leaves her to slump for a moment until she groans and starts instructing him.

It takes a few tries, but he gets her up the stairs and onto Rose’s mom’s bed, which is already stained with blood. Then he changes her bandages, does everything they can think of that might curb the infection, finds painkillers and lets her take slightly more than the recommended does because he’s scared of what she’ll do to him otherwise, and finally digs out the last of his food supply and splits it between them.

By now it’s dark, and John is exhausted. Terezi is nigh on delirious in an extremely unattractive way, but the thought of sleeping in Rose’s bed makes him feel weird and he’s creeped out by the idea of sleeping anywhere else in the house. The bed is massive, so he slides himself in, still mostly clothed, on the very edge.

Terezi rolls towards him and breathes hotly into his ear. “Now, now, big boy, don’t try any moves.”

He gulps, and she laughs and shuffles back over. She keeps an arm slung around him, just enough pressure to remind her he’s there, and he can forgive her that, kind of wants it too. There is another warmth, another heartbeat lying next to him, and for the first time since meeting her he allows himself to marvel at the miracle of it.

She snores loudly, already conked out. He pretty soon manages the same.

**Author's Note:**

> guess who doesnt really know much about zombie apocalypses and rarely writes john and rose ugh im sorry


End file.
